Episodic Review: Young Justice 24 (“Performance”)

…so we have a portion of the team posing as a new circus act to inspect some shady business that may or may not be related to the circus itself. Apparently this means sticking to alliterative names. Never thought of it until now, but it would have been a steaming pile of awkward if Aqualad was available for the mission.

“This clown car have room for one more?”

You know the awkward guy that invites himself to the party only to end up being a total killjoy when he shows up? The technical term for that shall forever be known as being a “Red Arrow.”

I do like the addition of Captain Stacy to the ever increasing cast taking from Spectacular Spider-Man. Good to know that series is living on in some form that even things like super-confusing rights issues can’t stop. Pretty sure a point is being made in having the VAs not even attempt at making a new voice for the series, too. I can accept things like Captain Stacy/Faraday and MJ/Black Canary just being a natural fit, but some things like Tinkerer/Klarion is just so out there that you’d think they’d have cast someone else entirely, and yet they didn’t. Double brownie points to Greg Weisman.

Did I mention how I love the Dangers’ costumes? Hair-down Artemis is a change that needs to be permanent. Her poofy ponytail is just too… poofy.

Not confident enough in my masculinity to comment on the guys’ outfits.

It seems like they’re making a habit out of using Ms. Martian’s psychic link to keep in contact with each other which, while a smart move, could be crazy hard to write for if the writers aren’t careful enough. Still, looks like that’s yet to be a problem… though I will say that it must be awkward being a passerby and seeing the lot of them just staring at each other while they converse in their heads. How does that work, anyway? Does Megan link everyone’s outer-most layer of thoughts so as to not mix up communications with Robin checking out Zatanna? What about in the case of heated arguments? Does she have to try harder to keep guys like Superboy and Red Arrow from mind-screaming profanities at each other? For my sake, I hope they don’t delve into any of these technicalities.

Everyone…

cry.

I don’t care how many times I’ve seen the Grayson backstory explained; it still gets me every time. Quite the interesting twist this time around, too, by switching the perspective to Dick rather than Batman like most versions tend to do. We don’t get more than a minute or so of backstory mentioning, but that’s all we need to learn just how much Robin’s still hurting. The fact that he still can’t talk about such an issue openly speaks for itself.

… also, weird that words like “backstory” even exist in a universe full of superheroes. It just seems so meta that to have someone even as comedic as Wally say it still doesn’t make it any less weird. Still, bros being bros… I approve.

“Does this circus have an elephant I don’t know about?”

As much as I enjoyed this episode, I will say that Red Arrow had some of the weirdest out of character lines I’ve ever heard him say. Perhaps it was because of such that I finally realized that he’s voiced by Crispin Freeman, which in turn makes me anticipate when Arrow gets abducted by Haruhi to relive the last days of summer. “Arrow-kun, denwa~~~”

In case you didn’t already know that SB’s “shields” symbolize drugs, well… there ya go. Was half-expecting the shields to start showing on his skin permanently as a reference to what I’m assuming aren’t shields, but an ordinary tattoo of Supe’s logo on SB in the comics. Accent on the “I’m assuming” bit. As much as I love DC, I’d primarily call myself a Marvel guy.

We’re dealing with a morpher and yet he makes the conscious decision to only morph his head in this scene while still keeping the frilly outfit? Parasite, you nefarious villain, you.

Usually when it comes to character specific episodes, you can tell that particular attention (and thus a sudden burst in bad-assery) is given to that certain character over the rest of the team.

…not true in this case. While this episode is clearly a Robin episode through and through, the episode also gives just as much attention to the team as a whole, showing the amount of camaraderie they’ve built up after the number of missions and drama they’ve gone through. Each of them really cares for each other and has each other’s back not just in a teammate sense, but in a family sense… which is especially brought home by the fact that the team is undercover as a family.

Digging the return of the Teen Titans-esque Robin hacker icons. I’m sure someone out there has made a custom screen saver based on the little shaking heads by now.

“This would be a whole lot easier with my flash drive.”

Alright, so apparently pick-pocketing the Parasite’s flash drive has stalled him enough to allow the team to catch up to him by train even after his head start of combined Kryptonian/Martian flight. Even if I were to accept that, Parasite’s awkward line mentioning how his progress could have gone a lot faster could have been handled a bit better.

The awkward lines only get worse during the final fight. Am I to assume that having your abilities sucked out of you results in you spewing out horrible food-related comebacks? Because that’s the only feasible reason I can come up with for Megan’s lines near the end of the episode.

And cap off the rest of the episode with Red Kyonrow saying “There is no mole.” I don’t care how heartwarmingly genuine their interactions were this episode; Red Arrow shouldn’t have been convinced of the team’s lack of a mole after just one mission (even after considering what happens the next episode…). It’s a good episode and theme overall, just with some questionable line choices for some characters.

Also, completely random, but am I the only one that gets distracted when I see certain computer fonts in my animated shows? Sure, it looks cleaner in comparison to drawing it out, but you’d think that a circus, especially one as old as this one, wouldn’t be anywhere near classy enough to go to Kinko’s and get customized stencils or whatever. I just find it distracting, it all.

Love how things were wrapped up with the ring master. The way he was portrayed throughout most of the episode made him come off as a jerk, though that’s mainly thanks to Parasite. So to have him switch to a fatherly figure the last few minutes was odd at first and was mostly salvaged by the top notch voice work of Stephen Root and… ugh… Jesse McCartney.

I guess every dog deserves their day… or in this case, robin voiced by ex-pop-music-idol.

Hoyoyo!

Welcome to DaemonCorps' Blog, where yours truly takes apart the inner mechanisms of his mind and translates them in a palatable text form for the general audience. Topics range from anime and manga to videogames to random rants about nothing in particular, so make your nerdy self at home and hope you enjoy your stay!